Activision Publishing has cancelled (or abandoned) two trademarks, according to a report on Games Cabin. The first is a trademark for Radical Entertainment's catch-phrase "Play, Work, Live, Breathe, Games." The company, which Activision acquired in 2005, is best known for developing Scarface: The World Is Yours, Crash: Mind over Mutant, Prototype, and other titles. Currently the studio serves as a support team for Activision.

It looks like this year's Call of Duty is not faring as well as last year's Call of Duty, according to Piper Jaffray analyst Michael Olson - as reported by Street Insider. Olson said the NPD Group's November US retail sales of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare were down 27 percent compared to last year's Call of Duty: Ghosts.

The United States District Court for Northern California has sided with Activision in a case brought against it by military patch maker Mil-Spec Monkey, Inc. for including one of its trademarked patches in Call of Duty: Ghosts. U.S. District Court Judge Richard Seeborg said that the plaintiff's trademarked Angry Monkey patch used by Activision was covered as protected speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

A fan-made project to recreate the Troika Games-developed Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines (originally published by Activision) using Unity has been shut down by CCP Games.

CCP Games owns the popular vampire-themed RPG world now, and according to the group behind Project Vaulderie, it has sent them a Cease and Desists letter. The non-commercial remake has been put on hold, but the developers are continue to explore ways to make the project a reality at some point.

According to this Ars Technica report, Activision is using DMCA takedowns on YouTube videos that tell players how to use glitches and exploits in its latest Call of Duty title, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.

Over the weekend video network Machinima sent out a tweet warning other YouTube video makers that Activision was cracking down on videos that highlighted possible ways to cheat in Advanced Warfare:

Bungie has released a free demo (or trial depending on what platform you download it on) for its first-person online focused shooter Destiny across all platforms the game is available on. The demo gives players a small taste of the Destiny character creation and progression systems, story mission content, and cooperative and social activities.

On Xbox One and PS4, the Destiny trial requires 20 GB of disk space, while the Destiny demo on Xbox 360 and PS3 requires 6 GB of free disk space.

I am not sure who the group of gamers are that imagined cross play between Sony and Xbox consoles was even a remote possibility, but Blizzard shattered that lofty dream over the weekend at its annual BlizzCon event.

Update #2: In the opening ceremony, Morhaime does not say "GamerGate." At around the 5:52 mark in the opening ceremony video he says "there's been a small group of people doing really awful things." The WOW Insider liveblog could be referring to something said in an interview with Morhaime after on the DirecTV stage, which we currently don't have access to.

Blizzard Entertainment has launched a teaser trailer for the World of Warcraft, "World of Warcraft: Looking for Group." The movie celebrates the ten year anniversary of the popular MMO with interviews with key Blizzard designers and executives, and also commentary from some of the game's millions upon millions of fans.

Activision Blizzard reported record third-quarter earnings, with year-over-year increases in revenues and income based on sales of its hit franchise Destiny and continued growth with World of Warcraft and Hearthstone. On a GAAP basis, the company reported sales of $753 million, way up from the $691 million from the same periods a year ago. On a non-GAAP basis, the company reported net revenues of $1.17 billion, way up from $657 million in the same period a year ago.

Sony has issued an advisory for those who pre-ordered and pre-loaded the digital version of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare on PS4 through the PlayStation Store and couldn't get the game to work.

"If you pre-loaded CoD: AW and you're experiencing issues with the game, you must delete all pre-load files from your system and re-download all Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare content," advised Sony in a response posted via the official PlayStation Knowledge Center.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare's lead developer has told BBC program Newsbeat that he doesn't see the Call of Duty community as being "misogynistic," and that he has a "low tolerance for toxic behavior."

A judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought by former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega against Call of Duty maker Activision. In his lawsuit filed in July, Noriega claimed that his likeness was used without his permission in Treyarch's first-person shooter Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. In the game protagonists Alex Mason and Frank Woods track Noriega (codenamed False Profit by the CIA) to the outskirts of Panama City.

Noriega sued Activision for the "blatant misuse, unlawful exploitation and misappropriation for economic gain" of his image in Black Ops 2.

Multiplayer Network Innovations, LLC has added Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Tecmo Koei Games Co., Ltd., Iron Galaxy Studios, LLC, Tencent Holdings Limited, and Tencent America to its growing list of court room combatants in multiple lawsuits claiming that these companies violate an abstract patent for "Interactive Multiple Player Game System and Method of Playing a Game Between at Least Two Players," or "MNI."

You might be under the impression that the video game company that make the most money in the world would be Electronic Arts, Sony, Microsoft, Activision, or even Google and Apple. But according to a new report from New Zoo that distinction belongs to Tencent.

The United States District Court for the Central District of California has invalidated the patent claims of McRO, Inc. (d.b.a. Planet Blue) against Activision and other parties in the video games industry. The two patents invalidated by U.S. District Judge George H. Wu concerned processes for "automatically animating lip synchronization and facial expressions of 3D characters."

After seven years of hush hush development, Blizzard has revealed that its super secret MMO project Titan is officially canceled.

"We didn't find the fun," Blizzard co-founder and CEO Mike Morhaime told Polygon in an interview. "We didn't find the passion. We talked about how we put it through a reevaluation period, and actually, what we reevaluated is whether that's the game we really wanted to be making. The answer is no."

Activision Blizzard announced this morning that it has every intention of filing a motion to dismiss what it categorizes as a frivolous lawsuit filed by former Panamanian dictator and convicted murderer Manuel Noriega. But the oddest twist to the story is who Activision Blizzard has hired to handle the case: former New York City Mayor, U.S. Attorney for New York, and Republican Candidate for President, Rudy Giuliani.

Professional eSports league ESL announced that it will host the BlizzCon 2014’s World Championship Opening Weekend at its studios in Burbank, California. ESL will be working with Blizzard Entertainment on BlizzCon 2014’s World Championship Opening Weekend (October 31st – November 2nd), which will be housed in the ESL TV Studios in Burbank, CA.

The event will be played out over two weekends for the first time in the its history and will feature qualification rounds for BlizzCon’s World of Warcraft, StarCraft II and Hearthstone World Championships.

Apparently Destiny's release in the UK helped increase sales of Sony's PS4 console in the region dramatically. PS4 sales rose by a phenomenal 300 percent week-on-week during the launch of Destiny, according to MCV - citing a source with access to unreleased Chart-Track data.

Activision Blizzard announced today that Destiny drew in 5 million unique viewers and 20 million total views on Twitch last week, making it the "biggest console game launch of the year" on the streaming service. According to Activision Blizzard, Twitch viewers watched right around 240 million minutes of Destiny gameplay during the first week of release from various streamers.

Activision announced today that, of the $500 million in Destiny copies it shipped to retail (announced last week), an estimated $325 million worth of product has been sold through to consumers. The sales data, which is as clear as a murky swamp, comes from an amalgamation of data from UK's Chart-Track, retail customer sell-through data, first parties and internal estimates from Activision Blizzard.

The videos below suggest that there's a cheat being used in Bungie's freshly released online game Destiny that gives players greasy enough to use it the ability to have unlimited ammo. The exploit allows the user to shoot indefinitely without the need to reload or pick up more ammo.

Bungie says that it is aware of players on college campuses having trouble playing Destiny and that it is looking into the problem to find a solution. Some players on college campuses are loudly complaining about getting the Centipede Error message, which relates to college networks that don't support or actively block activities like gaming.

Activision says that Bungie's Destiny has earned more than $500 million in revenue since the game launched on Tuesday. That figure, according to Activision, comes from retailers buying the game, and "business from first parties." Activision did not disclose any actual sales numbers, nor did it say if sales were related to digital or retail sales, or the PS4 White Destiny bundle deal it has with Sony.

Destiny's Planet View is pretty fascinating. It looks and feels a lot like Google's Street View, in case you hadn't noticed, because it is powered by the same technology. Located at www.destinyplanetview.com, Destiny Planet View lets players explore the universe of Bungie's upcoming action game, offering lore and other important information for each planet - all while the game's soundtrack plays in the background.

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ZippyDSMlee: .....win8 hates any left over hidden install partitions from other version of windows....only waste 5 hours finding that out...its ahrder than you think keeping up with 4 or 5 HDDS......03/03/2015 - 4:44am

Matthew Wilson: I am going to pax east, any games you guys want me to check out?03/02/2015 - 11:23pm

ZippyDSMlee: No one remembers the days of Cinemagic and Cynergy eh? :P, meh even MGS is getting to film like....03/02/2015 - 8:44pm

MechaTama31: I was about to get all defensive about liking Metal Gear Solid, but then I saw that he was talking about "cinematic" as a euphemism for "crappy framerate".03/02/2015 - 8:29pm

prh99: Just replace cinematic with the appropriate synonym for poo and you'll have gist of any press release.03/02/2015 - 5:34pm

Monte: Though from a business side, i would agree with the article. While it would be smarter for developers to slow down, you can't expect EA, Activision or ubisoft to do something like that. Nintnedo's gotta get the third party back.02/28/2015 - 4:36pm

Monte: Though it does also help that nintendo's more colorful style is a lot less reliant on graphics than more realistic games. Wind Waker is over 10 years old and still looks good for its age.02/28/2015 - 4:33pm

Monte: With the Wii, nintnedo had the right idea. Hold back on shiny graphics and focus on the gameplay experience. Unfortunatly everyone else keeps pushing for newer graphics and it matters less and less each generation. I can barely notice the difference02/28/2015 - 4:29pm

Monte: ON third party developers; i kinda think they should slow down to nintendo's pace. They bemoan the rising costs of AAA gaming, but then constantly push for the best graphics which is makes up a lot of those costs. Be easier to afford if they held back02/28/2015 - 4:27pm

Matthew Wilson: http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2015/02/28/the-world-is-nintendos-if-only-theyd-take-it/ I think this is a interesting op-ed, but yeah it kind of is stating the obvious.02/28/2015 - 2:52pm